


Twelve Quarters: to the Westward Winds

by Herbalina



Series: The Matter of Lara Dorren [2]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Aen Elle (The Witcher), Aen Seidhe (The Witcher), Companion Piece, F/M, Lore - Freeform, Multi, drabbles?, link in opening note, or purple bison, prose, some chapters contain spoilers, stew of mythology references that made into my headcanon, this is about sounds and imagery, to a fic with actual story plot, welcome to my headcanons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:07:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27367768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Herbalina/pseuds/Herbalina
Summary: A collection of shorts. Lara's greetings and farewells to those whose existence in her life she could not ignore, at her last moment.A companion piece to this fic where I reconstructed what happened in those days.
Relationships: Aelirenn | White Rose of Shaerrawedd/Ida Emean aep Sivney, Avallac'h | Crevan Espane aep Caomhan Macha/Lara Dorren aep Shiadhal, Cerro/Lara Dorren aep Shiadhal, Cregennan of Lod/Lara Dorren aep Shiadhal
Series: The Matter of Lara Dorren [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2001067
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	1. Father

**Author's Note:**

> A collection of shorts. Lara's greetings and farewells to those that were important in her life. A companion piece to [this fic ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27380437)where I reconstructed what happened in those days.

Every story begins with a birth, mine began with a death.

The death of my mother. 

_We waited so long._ They say. _And sacrificed so much. We left our home. One then the other. We sacrificed things we used to believe in._ We sacrificed The Truth. _And among all who sacrificed, your father endured the greatest._

_Love him. Don't leave him and don't fail him._

Once, long ago, I have loved the story. 

I was born, my father says, after so many long bleak hopeless winter nights, and my first cry in the darkness was the horn that sounded the Spring itself. So Spring returned, and with her not only the southern winds, the temperate streams, but the hope of our People. A race -- my race -- once illuminated the black nothingness of time and space, shall again bring light to existence. 

_My Evenstar, my little Lightbringer._ My father would say after a kiss on the forehead. 

_You are my everything now, Lara my daughter. And you will bring everything else henceforth, for us, for our people, and for Those Who Are Promised._

_En'ca minne. Our child, kissed by Sun._

The Sun!

The sun.

It is very cold now. 

Everything around me breathes their gaudy existence in my numbing body. I bestow on them my last holdings of this rough magic. But none is willing to lend the warmth I so need. 

And how I need it to be warm again.

To be warm again. To stay alive.

For my own en'ca minne. My little star in this dead night. I want to see your face one more time. And one more. And one more. My star.

A dry and clear winter night sky, brilliant with stars.

Under the stars, I kissed a man, and he kissed me back. Fires all the way to the horizon. Fires lit up our faces. Fires in our hearts. We thought we could light our future with this glowing happiness. 

We could have lighted the whole world.

How cold is the night. How little light. How quiet.

Yet in this ending where all is lost, I know I did what I must. 

I lived. 

I never did find out how to spell the icy name of _Eternity_ , but I learned that life indeed does burn. I only wish to be consumed by its flame a little longer. For my star.

She will come. I know. And my daughter will be in good hands. What happened between us in these short years, no matter. 

Yet still this terrible pain wedging deeper in my heart.

So many things left unsaid. 

_White ravens_ , Father would say, _they lure you in in the last moments of twilight. When you see them,_ he says, _then you feel as though your heart would bloom (_ he makes a gesture and the whole garden summered _), and together you fly on the westward winds with poetess' songs, until..._

Dear, dear Father. 

Cerro used to say I had the will of fire. _You never stop burning,_ she says. _Only the Gods know how you didn't set the whole world on fire_ , she says. _I admire your fire_ , she says.

But it's not true, Cerro. I'm not always so sure in this stubbornness. There were times my flames faltered and I almost wanted to snuff it out. 

When Crevan asked me the last time. 

_Come home_ , his voice was misted, _with me._

I did not look at him. Not because I thought I would turn back my heels when I saw the tears in his eyes; no. I know those blue eyes of sky would be the end of my days in a cage and his sky would be my only world. Some love ends. Some love changes into something else. I had always known. In my heart there was nothing left, and my eyes would force the truth into his eyes, I did not want to hurt him again, not without any purpose. 

But when he mentioned Father, I had to turn. I could not stop that reaction. 

_He grew weak in lost memories, soon there would be but a husk of the King we know._

_You were the cause of his first suffer, don't also be the last._

This poisoned language is spell strongest among all. Its honest viciousness pierces the skin and burrows underneath, changes my hate, and my love; it blends in my blood. Only when love is destroyed from one's heart can this spell work. And I destroyed that love. So I accepted the curse.

Father. Dear Father. You are my only regret. You should know that. 

I think you do. 

So many things left unsaid. And I am so very cold. 

Around me in this little cave under the hill, a spring blooms. Is that why I'm so cold? Maybe it wasn't I that brought the Spring, but Spring brought me. And now I must pay my dues. 

But this spring. This little Spring, will take care of my daughter before she comes. 

I know she will.

The white ravens come. And it is as father said. The last chill washed over and passed. Then it is warmth. Bloom. Sunflowers turning their faces towards the sun.

I flap my wings and rise with the wind and smoke. And together we sail on the winds with our huntress' eyes and songs of love and loss. 

And so we flew. To where the black sand meets the white foam of my once raging sea.


	2. The Orphan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened to Lara and Cerro? How did it all begin?  
> There would be a "part 2" with the first question, then Cerro would Cerro. Now she's just a baby.

Cerro. 

The orphan that is not an orphan. 

I often wondered, who else knew, what secrets I saw with my eyes. Who else knew, whose shadows I saw danced the music of bodies, whose eyes burnt in guilt and pleasure and conflict. 

Whose mouth pleaded with me when I was but a girl myself, on the verge of womanhood, and barely understood the toil of women’s labor in her face. Then, whose tiny, bloody hands touched my own, and whose tears rolled down on her cheeks. 

When I made haste to the portal, I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going to land, which desolate island or what boundless moor would be this orphan’s home. She cannot be allowed in  _ my  _ home, that I was certain. Too much divided us in the name of Truth, too much would be put at risk.

We rode in the sea. The Orphan, The Lover, and The High Priestess. Thunder crashed and lightning threatened to make the ocean our resting bed. But these mere elements spoke nothing against my magic in those days.

My magic of those days was a terrifying thing. 

In my blood, they say, the power of Ancients wed and remade themselves, and it was for me to summon them so the earth shakes and the ocean trembles and land divides or merges into anew.  _ I alone command the hurricane of such rough magi _ c, Father said.  _ You are your mother’s daughter. _

There would come a time I willingly abjured that magic, and with it, my own life. But that was for a worthy price, and came much, much later from that night on the tempest sea.

At that moment on that sea, in the boat of three, I enjoyed my magic. I reveled in the certainty of a youth who believed in her own strength of shaping the world to her liking, and the certainty that it would be good.

For I was good, wasn’t I? 

I did not have to save her, this child with no name, did I? 

But by Truth, I did come to love her. Maybe it’s something in the blood, or maybe, it’s only because we are built to recognize eyes that spoke desire to live. All creatures are designed to desire life and procreation, some more expressive than others, and a few we can recognize as much as our own, if our hearts are not as blind as our eyes. 

But the betrayals that would follow from that night on the sea. What heartaches, how many deaths. Kings would be made and unmade, battles fought won and lost.

Ideas we once so firmly believed in would falter, and people we trusted mocked that trust. 

On that night, on the sea, she was just an orphan. And I thought I have taken my first step to a great cause I did not even understand. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reference to The Tempest.  
> And as usual, thanks for reading:) Kudos and comments of any kind are dearly welcomed.


	3. Ithlinne

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Easnadh, or The Sigh, is a river that run through Tir Na Lia, Lara's first home.  
> Epiphyllum, a flower that opens up at night; something I read in our textbook when I was little and the picture and its ephemeral nature left an impression on me. I'm putting a few exotic plants in the great Sage's place because I want to add a bit to the "unreal" sense to it; and to expand on the fact that their Riders plunder from different worlds. I imagine many different things live in their world.

Ithlinne Aegli was my teacher. 

In those Last Days, when I was laden with our child, worked in our little garden of flowers and herbs in the mornings and fished in the lake by noon, Cragen worked in the tiny attic where ancient tombs slumbered in the afternoon sun like our cat, and at night we three huddled together in front of our fireplace filled with ashes from last night's burn, we exchanged each our respective huntings during the day and kept finding out, with amazement and joy, in the other, the details that were there but somehow never noticed. 

As I spent my waking hours dreaming in the warmth of a golden future, my nights were filled with moving pictures of the past.

I dreamed of her often. In my dream her garden grew still. The golden apple tree in the middle stretched towards the dome and cherry blossoms swayed and rained, while epiphyllum burgeoned though the days were bright as the sun, and all around us, walls made of ice stood faceless took in custody the flow of nature.

It was always thus. Ithlinne's garden was a place outside of time. _The last place_ , my Father called it. I did not understand until I was allowed our lessons in her garden. 

I never like her garden.

For a long time I could not dream since we started the lessons. One day Ithlinne gave me a necklace and simply said "Wear it before you go to sleep." It was silver chained with a small horn-shaped pendant set in the locket, under the starlight it shimmered like a polished pearl, but eerily; you would swear you saw lights of rainbow one moment, but the next when you blink, it's just white. The little horn was made of a real horn cut off from a unicorn's head.

With the necklace, I was able to dream again.

I did not ask where she had gotten it or what connection it had to my non-dream, or the garden. Ithlinne never answered questions. She gave answers, and because her power was known, her answers one must accept with absolute surety. 

In the end, I asked one question, and she gave the answer but once. 

It was not long after Cerro's coming-of-age ceremony, which by the definition of humans in Seidhe meant the start of the menstrual cycle for females; in my opinion, containing only less savagery than the men's in form not in quality. For that, we had a discussion on the ideas of marriage and a woman's role in it.

I was only three decades after my own first menstrual cycle, which meant something different for us, but nonetheless, I found myself shocked inside for a long time for that sudden change of status in my own life, though I always thought our custom was the epitome of civilization. 

There was a shift in the air. Everyone around me changed, only in such small ways that I could have nothing to pick at or to question and accuse them of. Surrounded me -- us -- all around so much talk of love, of a union, of renewal of the glorious past days and a new future, which only _I_ was able to deliver. I understood then, why everyone told me I was "promised." I was the dream born out of a dream, they told me. _A dream of spring. A spring for everyone_. 

But how can you share a dream? A dream is private by nature. Dreams belong to their dreamers. You can bend one's will as well as their bone, you can make them forget their own names, but their dreams you cannot take away. When they dream, they breach beyond any sphere of influence; only Dream could reach them. Dream or Death.

And when Cerro told me in her foolish youthfulness she would grow old with ten cats than marry a man, I almost could not laugh. I thought of my own destiny. 

Why could I not accept "my destiny?" I had always known it. No one ever tried to hide it from me. Everyone expected the two of us to accept each of our destiny and bind them into one, without redundancy. For, how could we? We, the Elder Blood, I more and he less. The Ancients whisper in our blood and guide us with the most efficient hands. So it was said.

Emotion is expected, even required, but however we tried to pretend it, we the Aen Elle, great artists of Time, singers of the Cosmos, without our life-breathing sculptures the worlds shook with sorrow in their loss. Deep down, it was never a question for either of us. It was simply thus: you will fall in love, you must. 

And he did. 

Maybe I did, too. A little later, and not for very long. 

For, what is love? Is it the tingling on my skin when Crevan touched me with his sky blue eyes? Or when they burned with a ferocity I did not see at other times when we made love? 

Is it when I laugh as he pointed out a referendum I did not notice from a very particular section of a very particular book we discussed several sunrises over? Is it when I relax in his flute under the willow tree that swayed by the Sigh, where our little barge swam around paper lanterns that were arranged into stars by wind scented with the musk of wisteria?

Is it destiny?

I asked that question. I knew of all the questions, this one is not transient; it is of life but longer, more endurable than life. 

Ithlinne sat under the cherry blossom, where pink petals tumbled and danced around in the wind, and they kept falling and falling and falling. And the cloud of flowers on the tree would not change as though salvaged by time.

I did not know where the petals went when they met the black earth. I just wanted to know the answer to my question. 

I was very young back then.

When I almost lost any hope, she spoke. She would not ask what prompted such question. I wondered if she had always known. 

"In my dreams." She said. 

"Long ago, I did not dream. Then I did, for a very short while, and I lost those dreams again. Willingly. I traded them for the dreams I have now, which are not dreamed at night."

"There is no night in my garden. Because one who lives in a nightless place needs not to fear what she might see in the dark, or whom."

"I gave up my dreams to dream for others."

"And I always thought, it was worth it. If I could hold back time, if I could hold off the decay, just long enough, the past will begin again."

Her voice suddenly changed.

"I was wrong." 

The cherry blossoms fell, quicker and quicker. A downpour of pink on her folded dress, on her shoulders, on her colorless hair. As they fell onto the ground, I noticed with the first sense of dread, they rotted. 

"As elves, we stipulate that we are the most distinguished, the extraordinary. We were as we are, few in numbers, so we think we are the minority that held the Truth. We think we are formed by the only minds that reason, any way of thinking besides our way of thinking is but illusory, and those without true minds in the next instant shall assume our way of thinking, as soon as we show our strength."

"No one remembers, our Truth was once somebody else' Truth. Our Sages, great young mind like Espane the son of Macha; or even you. You say 'it has already happened,' 'it will happen again,' but do you really know what it is? Or are you repeating elegant words with the mouths of automata?"

"What has happened, no one remembers today but me and your father. But we are feeble, frauded with memories. He tries very hard to not get things mixed up, but it's getting harder and harder still; while I, who sees everything but have no power to change anything, we can only watch as winter descends. Holding onto a single idea, that a single dream, a single dream thrusted upon a single set of shoulders, will bring everything back."

"But it is the ash we are worshipping, not the fire."

"We pride ourselves with our peerless craft in arts, our sculptures are unmatched by any civilization we _have_ _met_ , our bodies tune in with music like no other. But it is not always thus."

"Once, what we were peerless in was the craft of war! Our ferocity was unmatched by any civilization we met, and the music most divine to our ears was the sound of our enemy's blood igniting the primordial sky of darkness as our sword-dancers cut. We harvested heads of different people, burned their temples and books, struck down their Gods and whetted their treasures. These so-called Red Riders of your time are but a dying candle against the light of our Sun."

"You, all of you, have forgotten who we were! Blood flew. Blood will flow again. But this time, whose blood? Though the body still animates with its rotting breath, our heart had stopped beating long ago."

"Since the day we conquered _them."_

 _Who are they?_ I wanted to ask, but sound escaped me. In my heart a deep frost seized me with the truth I began to uncover but desperately wanted to run away from. 

Ithlinne saw the fear in me without her eyes.

"From the day we flooded their world, entered their cities and gardens, from the day we touched their silks and porcelain, besieged by the brilliance of such prizes we had never seen, from the day we let their language lodge in our head, their words mated ours and none can separate the two. From all those moments, we had been blind men walking in a dark forest ever since; and ever we shall."

"What we possess today has a root, and it is not ours! We were the winner, yet our victory vanishes like Snow Maiden under the sun. Only so little is left."

"That is why we must preserve the _fire_. That is why we Aen Elle left while the Aen Seidhe disintegrates further in assimilation. We still possess the last memory while they don't."

"Do you really know my name?"

She stood up suddenly and shook, the petals all around her evaporated in the cold everglow light of this artificial sun. Her eyes blazed with the winter of eternity.

The cherry blossom tree faltered and bowed down! Their branches withered in the wind that came from a different time, when nothing, absolutely nothing was lighted beside the lone will of life.

I bowed down too. Not to her, to the will of life now smoldered in this ancient body trapped in time.

"I am Mother, Virgin, and Crone! I am my sisters and they are me. We three, thunder lightning and rain."

"Imbaith Emhain Macha, Maev Shiadhal of the Red Sky, and me, Ithlinne Aesir aep Aeveninen, also called Crow in the Time of Doing. I rode the wings of war and delivered images of death in our enemy's head. As I swept over the field Macha espied in her mirror, Shiadhal liberated all who lived into death."

"You no longer remember." Like bonfire's last sparks rising to the night sky, she sighed. Her eyes no longer glow. And she sat down again, under nothingness and I saw her eyes were blind.

"We possessed and used all the creations of _theirs_ , but we have to pretend to despise them. We tried to erase their evidence of existence, but we failed. Perhaps it was that insolence to compete with Time that was our undoing."

"Their dreams make us lose sleep and some of us wilted with them. Some of us decided, then, that _we_ must live. And for us to live, they cannot. It was simply thus."

"We paid too dear a price for the attempt made by some, this effort to 'co-mingle.'"

"I lost my sisters." The blind eyes cried. "There were three of us, thunder lightning and rain. Now I alone decay in this empty husk, my dreams given and hopes broken."

More tears rolled down her cheeks. 

"Maybe we have never been the conqueror. Just vagabonds, forever roaming for a home, having in the long journeys lost the songs of our own past, we can no longer dream. And without our dreams, we are building castles with sand. Time will wash us away."

"You are supposed to be the last hope that _it_ won't happen. And today, instead of accepting you are but a pebble in the sea of Time, ready to be rounded into smooth sand by Destiny, you question me what it is."

She pointed at me, and from those blind eyes with their pearls of tears, I understood her resigned accusation.

"If you don't see it now, know: the seed of future, but not yours. Three choices you will make. Three betrayals you will act. And three loves you will gain and lose. Then you will look your destiny in the eyes. And you will remember me."

"I knew this day would come." She said after the breeze dried up those tears on her cheek. She was still so beautiful. 

"This is the one thing I did not dream but saw." She pressed a hand to her heart, and I felt tears welling in my own eyes. "I see it here."

"Gave me your hand." She said.

I did, and did not wince at the searing pain when she put her right palm over mine, something painful boarded itself from where we touched and her eyes blazed the second time. Only briefly.

"I have given my memories of dream to you." She said, "But not my powers. So you will keep your dream. You need not dream for others. Everyone is responsible for their own dreams."

"I have to accept that now."

She turned her back towards me and started to revive the cherry blossom tree. "I have nothing left to teach you now. Leave me and don't come back."

I looked at the garden one last time, I remembered all my lessons, and under the unnatural brilliance of the un-sun, I turned to the exit, where, outside the walls made of ice, a new moon was on the rise of midnight sky. 

I turned back before stepping out to tell her: 

"I will dream for you."

And I left.

Some time later, they told me Ithilinne died. I asked how, they said she simply died. She had too many memories and too many years, they said, something must have overcome her she drowned all her books in the well; these things happen, they said, in a hideous hushed tone that relished the tiniest mention of invented scandal.

Later still, I left. I had too many memories of my own and too many truths wore me down for my remaining years. These things happen. Like they say. 

When I left, I left death. I thought I chose life. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Three Sisters is a inspired by The Morrígan from Irish mythology.  
> Thank you for reading:) Kudos and any kinds of comments are welcomed.  
> Next chapter I am currently writing about is for Avallac'h, but until I publish I guess I can't be sure. It all depends on if it turns out this might spoil much from the [main fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27380437/chapters/66911599).


End file.
